tomh009

The Athletic chose the best draft (of the last 20 years) for every NHL team. For Habs, they chose 2007: https://theathletic.com/1848921/2020/06/29/wheeler-every-nhl-teams-best-draft-of-the-last-20-years/ Now, none of those four play for the Habs today, but we do have (Shea) Weber, Suzuki and Tatar for PK and MaxPac. (Yannick) Weber didn't pan out, while McDonogh was given away in the Gomez trade. But it's interesting that the Athletic (Wheeler) picked it as potentially the best draft by any team in the last 20 years.

And I agree with this ... there is a very good chance that one of the top-eight-ranked players will still be available at 9th pick, because one or two teams will pick someone not ranked in the top eight. So, ninth should still be a very solid pick.

There really were no good options. This has its downsides but so did all the alternatives.

There is a way to fix this stupid tanking problem. All it takes is willingness to make a change. https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/shane-doan-tanking-gold-plan-nhl-lottery-draft/ So, I can't see this happening anytime soon.

What’s the 87.5% scenario — we pick ninth?

Maybe Julien could engineer a few "too many men" penalties at key points in the series? Or request too many reviews to trigger a penalty?

Could he sign another contract to cover the rest of 2019? This is really idle speculation, but what else is there to talk about?

AHL teams will lose their ticket revenues (and sometimes concession revenues). Attendance of 6.5M total, assume $20 average (some spectators will not have paid) for a $130M total gross ticket revenue. Subtract maybe $10M (or more) for operations costs for home games. That would leave $120M to be covered by 30 NHL teams, or $4M or so per team. A pretty small percentage of an NHL team's budget (really it would be $2M paid by the team and $2M paid by the players). On the other hand, you could leave the AHL on its own, and just hope that it (or the team you care about) doesn't collapse. Logically, it makes sense for me, just like Boeing and Airbus are supporting their suppliers. But, yes, getting all the owners to agree might be a non-starter.

In the no-AHL scenario I would play ... oh, crap, I don't know how to even make this work. If there are to be no spectators allowed, what the NHL should do is fund AHL teams so that they can continue to play. It's not a massive cost to the NHL. And otherwise the teams will not be able to develop their prospects. And will, in the worst case, lose them to a European league or KHL.

Thanks, that was a good read! But your article does say we could extend Lindgren, even though it's not likely?

Yeah, I agree that he's unlikely to be a solution. But if it's a choice between Lindgren and another Niemi/Kinkaid-level UFA, I'd rather stick with the devil we know.

Would he be eligible if we signed him to a 1Y contract first?

I'd rather give it to Lindgren (or Demchenko) than another rent-a-goalie. This is the last two seasons: Primeau looks great but only two games. (Even the Lindgren and Kinkaid sample sizes are pretty small.)

ON and QC are indeed the two worst provinces for COVID-19. But compared to most US states, they are super safe. Nevada is currently seeing around 10% of their COVID-19 tests come back positive, Ontario is below 1%. (The amount of testing is roughly comparable.) But I don't think either provincial government -- or the feds, for that matter -- is keen on hosting this and experiencing another outbreak.

Yeah, I can't see them bringing up Brook at this point. Or Olofsson, who really struggled when he was called up. The only candidates in my mind are Alzner and Leskinen, and I think the choice really depends on what they are looking for from the 10th D.

Sergachev did?

And a UFA will only take cap space ... but it is a struggle to get them to sign up for a move to Montreal. When you send out an offer sheet, the RFA has exactly two choices, take that offer sheet or wait for his team's offer (or another offer sheet, which is not very likely).

If no arbitration, then the question for him is what would Tampa be willing to offer him (given no arbitration) vs the offer sheet.

The first season Hasek dipped to under .915 was 2003-2004, when he turned 39. But that really isn't a realistic expectation for Price. But Hasek was still doing .903 after he turned 43!

If Sergachev chose not to sign at, say, $8M, there is no guarantee that Tampa would give him $7.5M. Maybe a more relevant question is what would he get if he didn't accept Tampa's offer and it went into arbitration?

Some people complain that small businesses can't survive with higher corporate taxes. But corporate taxes are only payable by corporations that are profitable in the first place ... And, yes, I am also OK with moderate income tax rate increases.

Given the recent public health issues, long-term care problems and policing challenges (and even ignoring the environmental crisis), I think a lot more people would be willing to consider paying some more taxes now than would have been the case a year ago. If we restore the GST/HST rate, we would need to look at the HST rebates to ensure that the increase would not be too regressive and hurt low-income Canadians. And a thumbs-up for the Economist quote! 👍

That's me, too. I actually volunteered for some federal PC campaigns back in the Joe Clark era, and I still have a lot of respect for him. Martin converted me to the other side of the aisle (was never a big fan of Chretien). And then Reform took over the PCs, and their social conservatism has been a big red flag for me. Fiscal conservatism, sadly, is pretty much dead at the moment: none of the parties in Parliament promote fiscal responsibility, it's only a question of whether they want to spend more or cut taxes more. And this is really part of a global trend: I think the historically low interest rates have enabled politicians to toss fiscal responsibility in the bin and spend money like drunken sailors. We have to wait to see what the post-COVID world looks like.

That quote wasn't from an Athletic writer, though, it was from an unnamed GM/coach/scout (one of each contributed comments to the article).

He's actually admitting that there is racism in Quebec, he is arguing about the use of the word "systemic". To avoid these kinds of arguments, I prefer to say that there is bias, discrimination etc rather than using the "systemic" word. The meaning is basically the same.